News

The DC government is planning to replace the bulbs in more than 75,000 of the city’s streetlights with cheaper and more energy-efficient LED technology within the next two to three years. The change is expected to cut the city’s annual…

A new bill approved last week by the DC Council could add heft to the city's language access services, easing life for schoolchildren and parents who speak little to no English. The Language Access for Education Amendment Act,…

Over 150 local artisans and entrepreneurs are getting the chance to showcase their work — and bolster the bottom line — at this year’s Downtown Holiday Market, an annual marketplace set up in front of the National Portrait Gallery and…

A rising tide may lift all boats, but it can also drown the people left ashore. The Trump administration recently released a hefty new report finding devastating impacts of climate change across the country — including here in DC, where…

“Jambalaya.” The word typically refers to a large pot of Louisiana-style stew. It’s also the term Abimbola George uses to describe the melting pot of educational programs he’s helped introduce since 2014 at Malcolm X Elementary School in…

Last month’s pivotal midterm election provoked heightened frustration over DC’s lack of a vote in Congress. District residents on Nov. 6 may have found themselves longingly gazing across the Potomac River to spy on Arlington County, where…

After winning initial DC Council approval last month in an 10-2 vote, a bill to accelerate the timeline on a new Ward 8 hospital to be run by George Washington Hospital is encountering new resistance. Legislators are expected to consider…

The DC Council is moving toward passage of a major omnibus campaign finance reform bill, with a final vote scheduled this week after an initial OK in November. If approved, the legislation would overhaul campaign fundraising in a city long…

Voting isn’t over for residents of DC’s Ward 4. They will take to the polls on Tuesday to choose their representative on the State Board of Education. One month after elections for board seats in wards 1, 3, 5 and 6, this special election…

As a DC Public Schools student, Alexsandra Alfonso had to overcome unusual educational challenges due to her visual impairments — for instance, she once had to wait a month to receive a textbook in braille. Even so, she graduated with…

People look at Zahir Muhammad and automatically assume he plays sports. At 6 feet 3 inches, he towers over most of his peers at DeMatha Catholic High School. But the 16-year old’s sport of choice isn’t basketball or football: it’s chess.…

Providence Hospital workers and concerned community members turned out in force at a DC government hearing this month, expressing frustration and disappointment with the planned closure of Providence Hospital in Northeast next month and a…

Since 1983 Shepherd’s Table, a nonprofit in downtown Silver Spring, has provided daily home-cooked meals and other vital resources for low-income communities and homeless individuals. By 2016, demand for its services increased — and the…

Election Day may be over, but there’s still more voting to come this year in one corner of DC. Four candidates vying to become the Ward 4 representative on the DC State Board of Education squared off at a recent forum on how they would…

Just weeks before Monday’s shake-up atop the city’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, DC Council members joined tenants and affordable housing advocates in criticizing the agency for years of overlooked housing violations and…

Principal Rachel Tommelleo has the Midas touch of kindness. It’s her compassion for every student that makes her school in Ward 4’s Brightwood neighborhood a warm, welcoming place for each and every student. “If she had it her way, she…

The DC Council is considering legislation that would make the District the first jurisdiction in the Washington area to ban the trade of ivory and rhinoceros horn, over a year after the nation’s capital was exposed as a black-market hub for…

After two decades, Karla still recalls traveling through the desert with her brother and aunt in 1998 on their way from El Salvador, reliant on a “coyote” to get the three of them where they needed to go. Her mother was already in…

Last week an estimated 116 million Americans participated in the 2018 elections, making it the first midterm in history with over 100 million votes cast. Across the country voters turned out for hotly contested House and Senate races,…

DC is banning plastic straws, and Jack Evans’ social standing is taking a hit. “Many of my friends won’t talk to me anymore,” the Ward 2 DC Council member said with a wry smile during a Committee on Transportation and the Environment…

In a darkened section of Busboys and Poets on Monroe Street NE, people sit and watch a documentary about DC residents fighting for affordable housing options just a few blocks away at the World War II-era Brookland Manor Apartments, the…

On a cold day last February, 89-year-old Thomas Pressley walked into the 3rd District police station to report that someone had scammed him out of his money. He was fortunate to be speaking with Sgt. Juanita Eccles, a 31-year veteran of the…

Parents lobbying the DC Council to reduce regulations on parent-led playgroups may get a decision before the end of the year, as the District’s legislators work to find a solution that does not inconvenience playgroups with overly…

A DC Council move might speed up construction of a new hospital in Southeast Washington on the site of St. Elizabeths. Current plans call for George Washington University Hospital to run the new facility, which the city intends to serve…

A new website, Mapping Segregation, seeks to illuminate DC’s history of racially restrictive housing covenants from the last century that continue to define the city’s segregation patterns today. The site is the brainchild of DC…

Nearly 50 people rallied Saturday against Mayor Muriel Bowser’s plan to move the Benjamin Banneker Academic High School to the site of the former Shaw Junior High School, instead of the neighborhood middle school they say the city promised…

While most District residents are undoubtedly familiar with Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC’s longtime delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, fewer may be aware of the city’s shadow elected officials on Capitol Hill. Since 1990, DC has…

A decade into mayoral control of the schools, questions about whether the DC Council should add a level of independence for the state education agency have become a major issue in the DC State Board of Education races.   Two new bills —…

While the at-large DC Council contest has drawn the bulk of the local attention ahead of Tuesday's general election in the District, various news outlets, unions and political organizations have weighed in on races across the DC ballot.…

Mayoral control of the city’s educational system, student enrollment and the District’s school lottery system topped the subjects that candidates for the Ward 6 seat on the DC State Board of Education explored during debates in the months…